Over the last couple of weeks there's been some fairly dramatic things going on at Adobe. First, there's been some fairly significant layoffs, then they've told the world that Flash for mobile is now effectively dead, and now they've announced that the Flex SDK will be donated to the Spoon Project (as PhoneGap was to the Apache Foundation).
So, what the hell is going on? Well, it seems to me that the accountants and turned up and told Adobe that they need to make some changes to how things are operating. Flash for mobile was never going swimmingly largely due to iOS, and the Flex SDK was pretty much a direct cost due to the fact that it was open source, and Adobe has to try and recover that cost from the sale of Flex tooling.
We've not seen layoffs at Adobe on this scale since December 2008 (and again in November 2009) so what's happened?
Well, in short, I think technologies been catching up. Adobe, and Macromedia before them, have always pitched the Flash Platform as the way around the minefield of web browser compatability. Flash was traditionally seen as the only way to get something to show in the same way in any browser, and the only way to overcome the shortcomings of JavaScript performance. However, over the last few years, that field has changed entirely. We're now looking at browsers that meet standards better than ever before, and JavaScript execution that's so fast the JavaScript engines are now being used to power all sorts of things.
What's more this isn't only affecting Adobe. Microsoft found themselves in a similar position with it's dead duck Silverlight. Silverlight was intended to be a Flash competitor, but was quickly reduced to being focused for mobile and desktop application development alongside WPF. Even now Microsoft appear to have frozen those two projects to focus on open source alternatives.
Which is where we hit the core of the problem for these companies. Generally speaking, managers love to be sold to, and love to see feature lists and marketing bumpf that sells them what they think they need. However, developers and users generally don't tend to like this sort of thing - they prefer to use the tools that make them productive and easily produce the stuff that their bosses are wanting them to produce. In the past this has been why Flash was so popular. Developers couldn't do the sort of things they could with Flash with HTML and JavaScript, however, now they can so they're moving towards using the open source alternatives instance.
This is leaving Adobe in a pickle. They've got they're main money earner on one side, Creative Suite, and the Flash platform on the other, which was always a good way to shift CS licenses. However, as people are now turning their backs on Flash Adobe are left with the problem of how to make the most of where technology is headed, hence the recent announcements.
Ultimately, from a developers point of view, vendor derived technologies are always an iffy thing. Then vendor can change, or completely kill a product at a moments notice and you have to live with it. However open source is always there, and won't go anywhere. If I for instance, suddenly don't like where Rails is going, I can just use the current version - it's out there and freely available.
So, if you're thinking of using closed source software, beware. You can guarantee that a man in a suit (and probably one trained as an accountant) is ultimately making the product decisions and direction.